Its owner and award-winning filmmaker tenant love the red-brick building at 24 Mercer St., yet want it torn down and redeveloped into a boutique condo building.

And there appears to be no community opposition despite the building’s designation as a heritage property.

Nevertheless, staff in Toronto’s planning division are recommending that city council refuse the proposed teardown. The issue comes to Toronto and East York community council Tuesday.

“It’s a special building,” says Ron Mann, on a smoke break outside the building where he’s rented space since 1985 and is currently editing his next documentary.

Over the decades, he’s watched the transformation of the entertainment district and Mercer St. He intends to purchase two floors in the proposed live/work space, one to live in, the other for business.

“They’re going to bury me on Mercer,” he joked.

Named after its original owner, the Alexander Johnston House was constructed in 1858 as a two-storey town home. It was later converted into a hat block producing factory. A third storey was added sometime after 1920.

The building “is a rare surviving example of an urban town house in Toronto and among the oldest surviving buildings in the city,” reads a report written by city planners.

It is also one of the last remaining buildings designed by John Tully, the same Toronto architect behind Walnut Hall, a row of four Georgian townhomes on Shuter St. built in 1856 that was demolished by a city work crew in 2007 after years of neglect. Heritage Canada Foundation included Walnut Hall in its annual “Worst Losses” list in 2008, calling the neglect and demolition a case of “architectural euthanasia.”

Toronto building inspectors, however, say 24 Mercer is not another Walnut Hall. “The building is not in a condition that would necessitate its removal,” the planning department report says.

But architect and owner Deborah Scott says despite major investments in the property that she bought in 2005, “it is not enough, with all the new surrounding redevelopment, which will completely overshadow it,” she wrote in email.

“To properly restore and conserve the historic façade, and bring it up to building code and provide accessibility, we need to redevelop the site creatively.”

The structure, which has a timber foundation, is sandwiched between the Hotel Le Germaine and a massive construction site where a 33-storey tower is set to rise on the north side of Mercer St. between John St. and Blue Jays Way.

The city has already approved in principle the construction of a 15-storey building with full-floor elevator key access live/work lofts above the original 1858 façade.

The proposed redevelopment is a “solution to the changing context around us,” Scott wrote.

Based on input from heritage conservation experts and structural engineers, Scott’s firm, Scott Morris Architects, is proposing that the façade on the existing structure be dismantled and removed before demolition, and then reconstructed and integrated into the proposed condo development.

City employees, however, won’t give their blessing.

“The complete removal of historic fabric from the site and a reconstruction that treats character defining features and attributes as cladding on a completely new building system, does not sufficiently conserve this rare building’s heritage value,” the planning department report says.

Councillor Adam Vaughan believes this is a case of “the preservation principle being taken too far.” The building is an “orphan” that’s getting left behind on a street that’s undergoing rapid redevelopment. It would be a different story if it belonged to a series of row houses. The structure is “so mangled,” beyond repair and its heritage value, Vaughan says.

“It is a standalone remnant of a building.”

Architect Michael McClelland,a founding member of the Canadian Association of Heritage Professionals, told Spacing Toronto in 2011 that the loss of Walnut Hall was “emblematic and unnecessary.”

He says 24 Mercer is different. This seems a case of the city taking a “black or white” position on conservation. While staff asked Scott to “look at all the options,” they’re not open to what the firm’s experienced consultants are saying, he said in an interview Friday.

“Where does that leave you? That’s where there needs to be a balanced consideration. Heritage conservation, is about, in the end, having a better city.”

While he was critical of the Walnut Hall loss, McClelland believes Scott’s proposal may make the most sense as long as the façade reconstruction is held to a high standard. There are good examples in the city of façade reconstruction, such as the building inside the atrium of BCE Place, and there are many examples internationally.

“That’s where city staff should be involved … to ensure there’s the follow through and the reconstruction work is done properly.”

Al Carbone, owner of KitKat restaurant on King St. W., known for his outspoken opposition to development in the entertainment district, is, in this case, fine with Scott’s plan.

“It’s not on King St., and the heritage is being protected,” he said. “Why stop a little person when everyone else is granted 47, 50 storeys and more and she’s denied, when they’re building 33 storeys beside her.”